updated 02:50 pm EDT, Sun March 30, 2008

ASUS Eee Win XP Launch

A Windows version of the Eee PC will be available early next month, according to statements by ASUS to Laptop magazine. The company now expects its Americanized version of the 4G-X to appear within the first two weeks of April, when it will start selling at Best Buy retail shops; the system will be priced at the same $400 as the 7-inch Linux model and will share the same 4GB of flash storage, 512MB of RAM, and 900MHz Celeron as the months-old original.

Neither ASUS nor Best Buy has said whether the system will ship with any bonuses as part of its Western launch; the Japanese version came bundled with a 4GB SDHC card, which helped offset the reduced storage space that resulted from the larger Windows installation. ASUS hasn't said when the 7-inch Windows unit will be available to other resellers, though it has already said the larger, faster Eee PC 900 will have both Windows and Linux as options when it launches within the next few weeks.